I had just entered my floor on Broadway after a meeting. Walking by an office which overlooks the Hudson, I looked to my left and out the window saw a plane. It could not have been more than a mile above water. I froze just outside in the hall, I thought to myself two things in this order: "was that a plane?," and "I need to go home. Now." I say that because I live about an hour's commute from the city and when you see a plane in that situation in that city, the obvious possibility comes to mind. And if god forbid those events were to be repeated, Manhattan was about to shut down with me in it. That second someone yelled, "Oh my god its landing on the water." I ran to the window and sure enough there was plane, in the Hudson. It was already sideways, floating above water. It was drifting too, fast. At least 8 mph.

Everyone flocked to the windows. Some immediately called 911, but everyone knew that had already happened. In a frantic haze I thought, "I need to tweet this." Shaking, I pulled out my blackberry and punched out that misspelled tweet. Now I'm not proud of the fact that one of the first things I thought about while watching a plane drift downstream like a loose sailboat was my own inconsequential internet fame, but I was shocked by the delay between major news coverage and related tweets.

People were standing on the wings and ferries had moved in. It was surreal standing there watching a plane, a freaking plane, drift on the Hudson with people standing on its wings. Within 15 minutes the airliner had drifted out of sight and we waited for somebody to cover this on the news.

I had checked my blackberry to see who had tweeted about the crash first, and I thought mine was second. I had missed a few NPR interview requests via replies. At the time I didn't even think to check that reply box. It has filled since with people telling me I had been the first to tweet and that they found articles mentioning it and so forth.

I searched Google the next morning, coming across an article, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/twitter/4269765/New-York-plane-crash-Twitter-breaks-the-news-again.html, which had my name and tweet. At first I thought "wow for all the tweets to misspell I chose that one." And I'm an English major? But if citizen journalism continues to pick up steam, its seemingly fitting. This is the language of our social media - terse, personal, and wholly descriptive of our day to day language. The tweets posted on that Thursday afternoon are only the beginning.

- courtesy of Twitterer Jim Hanrahan